findingDulcinea

A relaunch of SweetSearch - and versions for News and History too!

Since 2009, SweetSearch has been the best place for students - and anyone else - to begin research.

It leverages Google to search only a fully vetted "whitelist" of websites. The original index was created by 50+ librarians, educators and researchers who collectively invested over 100,000 hours in finding the best resources.

We've worked hard to keep the index authoritative and appropriate.  This summer, we reviewed every link in the index, and found new, worthy websites we had missed.

 

Add a fresh, mobile friendly look and we say confidently that SweetSearch is the best research engine for students to begin their search. Some educators have asked us about the Google Ads at the top; we are working on options to remove them. For now, tell students to ignore the clearly labeled, first few links at the top and then dive into the spectacular results below. 

Once we made SweetSearch better than ever, we decided to make more of it! 

• SweetSearch History, in beta, searches a whitelist of 2,000+ primary source & other authoritative history websites. It includes "modern" sources, such as newspapers and magazines, but weights websites of museums, universities and official government sources higher.  We are adding design elements and "field testing" it - and we would love your feedback on whether there are websites we should add, delete, or re-weight. 
• With all the talk of "fake news," we also created SweetSearch News. It searches 1,600+ websites of credible newspapers, magazines and other current events media. It more heavily weights niche, regional and ex-US resources than most news search engines. There is an option to see only ex-US resource
• For the first time, we also offer image search, in all three search engines.

All of our search engines include quality websites for younger students; to find them, use "students" or "kids" as a keyword.

Email Mark[dot]Moran[at]DulcineaMedia.com with any comments.

Thank you for your support!

Mark, CEO, Dulcinea Media

 

 

Can one course stem the root cause of bullying, substance abuse and self-harm? Can it also foster a culture that creates empowered, empathetic, collaborative, passionate agents of change, who know they matter?

I was proud to co-author, with Angela Maiers, an online course on Choose2Matter. It's the most important work I've ever done.

How Dulcinea Media Helps School Librarians Serve Teachers & Students

At Dulcinea Media, we view school librarians as our best allies in helping us fulfill our mission to help students learn how to use the web effectively.

We've attended the past two AASL shows and many local library conferences, and we've spent plenty of time visiting schools and monitoring LM_Net to learn how we can help librarians help teachers and students. We've also become one of the most ardent advocates for school librarians in the face of clueless school boards that want to cut their positions.

Click here to read reviews of our work. Perhaps the kindest words in the many reviews of our products come from Temple University Professor Renee Hobbs, who wrote to us, "your website is such a treasure trove of fascinating stuff! I want every educator in America to know about it."

We agree with that aim! To that end, here is a brief discussion of our products and how they help school librarians serve:

1. In April 2012, we'll be releasing our Web Research Tutorial; it is the only product for which we will charge a fee, and a modest one at that. Based on research studies and the result of extensive interviews, it will teach web research skills to educators and students in a way that no other product does. Using a multimedia, varied format, it meets them where they are and uses pragmatic analogies and examples to bring them along to where they need to be.

2. SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students, is a free tool that helps educators and students find credible, comprehensive resources about their subject, quickly (BONUS: librarians and teachers tell us it helps them find awesome resources as well!  We use it to respond to librarian queries on LM_Net and often find the requested info in seconds). SweetSearch searches only 35,000 websites that research experts have approved, and it does not contain offensive ads! We've also introduced SweetSearch4Me, the only search engine that prominently features on the first results page the high quality Web sites created for elementary school students. READ MORE.

We offer a widget for both SweetSearch and SweetSearch4Me, so you can embed them on your school Web sites. But the best way to get your students to use these superior tools is to add them on to every browser in your school; to do this for Firefox and Internet Explorer, just click the green Add-On box on the top right of SweetSearch.

3. Do your students write about the same events and people, year after year? SweetSearch Biographies is an indexed collection of more than 1,000 biographies, sortable by profession, gender, and race/origin. Students using this will soon be teaching you about people you've never heard of.

4. Access our landing page for Social Studies  In the left column, you'll find dozen of Web Guides that are comprehensive, narrated tours of the best content on the Web about the subject, that directly link to the best primary sources about a subject. We have hundreds of other web guides as well. For librarians, we offer Sweet Sites, a distilled version of our education Web Guides, divided into teacher and student pages for high school, middle school and elementary school. Feel free to link to these pages, or even copy the links you like onto your own library Web site.

The social studies page includes our seminal article, "101 Great Sites for Social Studies Class," that points teachers and students to a trove of great sites, organized by topic. You'll also find on this page links to articles that curate the best online resources, such as "Sites for Learning About Countries," "Sites for Learning About the 50 States," "9 Sites to find Interesting Interviews," and our Innovations series.

5. Our  On This Day articles explain an historical event, what led up to it, what happened that day, and the long-term recriminations and echoes in history. We also publish it in Spanish, as Hoy en la Historia. We've recently partnered with The New York Times to combine our respective On This Day products into "Historic Headlines," which relates historic events to today's world.

6. The many presentations we create each year are posted on Slideshare. The presentations explain, among other things, why so many websites restrict users under 13 and what you can do about it, and how to understand CIPA to fight overly restrictive Internet filters.

7. We've written thousands of headline articles in our "Beyond the Headlines" Section; Joyce Valenza wrote on her School Library Journal blog that our "discoveries are  timely and seem to continually attack those topics my students research." We find additional background or reference information on the topic, related topics and opposing points of view. We integrate all this information into a cohesive, comprehensive look at the topic, and link to our sources, which we align in a single box.

A white paper released in November 2010 by Temple University Media Education Professor Renee Hobbs, sponsored by The Knight Commission, included Beyond the Headlines in its "Portraits of Success: Powerful Voices for Kids" and wrote, "Finding Dulcinea... addresses the 'context deficit' that occurs with online searching."

Some examples of where we addressed the context deficit in a headline story:

• after the death of Osama Bin Laden, social media was clogged with the rampant use of poorly cited or fake quotes online. Many noted the problem, but none suggested ways to address it. Thus we wrote "Misquotes: Searching for Authenticity Online," which teaches students how to verify quotes.
• Because we know schools struggle with how students can use Wikipedia effectively, we wrote, "The Top 10 Reasons Students Can't Cite Wikipedia."
• When Iran violently suppressed protests last year, we provided context by writing about the History of Iranian Revolutions.
• When a killer whale tragically drowned a Sea World trainer, leading to calls for its release into the wild, our article about it summarized and linked to a PBS documentary that provided a chart discussing all 133 killer whales that had ever been captured in the wild for use in shows.

8. We know your hectic schedule doesn't have always a slot that says "visit findingDulcinea." So we come to you! Our free e-mail newsletter arrives at your inbox with an overview of On This Day and our Happy Birthday biography feature, as well as links to our best education articles.

Ask your students to become a fan of findingDulcinea on Facebook, and we'll occasionally interrupt their "urgent" status updates with some inspiring and educational content.

Please also follow us on Twitter  @findingDulcinea

Help us help you. Please send me feedback, questions, suggestions, etc. on our content and tools, to [email protected].

We’d love to hear from you!

 

Sincerely,

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

Dulcinea Media

findingDulcinea and LineTime Partner on History Timeline App

We're thrilled to announce a new collaboration with LineTime, a German group that develops mobile apps.

LineTime 1.o was introduced through the Apple App Store in January 2011. It received rave reviews, including a "Pick of the Week" nod from Apple Germany, and the top award at Appbackrthon Berlin, an iOS Hackathon.

LineTime 1.0 offered users the ability to view the course of modern history on a timeline, and to drill down into each century, decade or year. It was populated with history content from Wikipedia, and was intended as a demonstration of the app's potential when populated with additional content, or used in conjunction with other apps.

We immediately saw the tremendous potential for this app in education. It literally changes the way students look at history, enabling them to view historical events in full context, in a way that textbooks never could.  Most history courses are narrow in scope, and review a limited set of events that fit the theme of the course. Thus, students of United States History often study the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and then World War II, while barely taking note of the troubles of the Weimar Republic and rise of the Nazi party in Germany, the rise of fascism in Italy, the Spanish Civil War, or the start of the second Sino-Japanese War. With the right content, the LineTime App has the potential to enable students to see what was happening all over the world in a particular decade, year, month or day.

The app's search function also enables students to trace history through a single word. Search on "earthquakes," "assassination" or "treaty" and you'll find a list of every entry in the app that contains those words. Students can then tab through these entries and see history through yet another lens.

We promptly began collaborating with LineTime on a partnership to add findingDulcinea's On This Day content to the app. Our On This Day content is comprised of more than 400 well-researched articles about important historic events, providing full context about the event and links to the best online resources about it. It's the basis of our Historic Headlines collaboration with The New York Times, and we're thrilled to introduce this additional way for students and history buffs to interact with our content.

LineTime 1.5 is now available in the App Store for the introductory price of $2.99 (with bulk discounts for schools). We plan to move quickly to offer updated versions with substantially more content. While these future versions will surely be priced higher than this introductory price, anyone purchasing LineTime 1.5 will receive all future updates at no charge. Watch this video to see LineTime 1.5 in action!

We're also contemplating additional apps that will complement LineTime 1.5, for a modest additional charge. Some may focus intently on a particular time period or event; for instance, we may offer a separate app with hundreds or even thousands of entries about the U.S. Civil Rights movement, or another with minute-by-minute details of the assassination of JFK. We are also contemplating another app that would enable users to customize LineTime with their own custom entries, whether about their ancestors, their country or their local area.

As always, we highly value the feedback of educators, who have essentially written our product roadmap the past three years. Please write me at Mark[dot]Moran[at]DulcineaMedia[dotcom] with suggestions for how we can make the LineTime App an even better learning tool.

Sincerely,

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

 

 

 

 

Examples of Innovative Teaching Practices

 Since September 2006, we've been curating content and creating innovative tools to help educators integrate the Internet into their curriculum, and teach students how to use the Internet effectively.

A barrier to the wide adoption of our products is the status quo - textbooks and other crude tools from the 19th century that remain the primary method by which students learn. We've attended dozens of education conferences in the past two years, and have met thousands of passionate educators who are determined to bring about their own version of education reform - one that is focused on students. The goal of these efforts is to create a new system of education that is relevant to and engages students, addresses them as individuals, lets them develop their passions, and encourages the development of skills they'll need to succeed when they graduate, not the skills their parents needed when they graduated 30 years ago.

With the explosive growth in social media, it has become easier to interact with these educators on a daily basis, rather than at once-a-month conferences. The number of solid examples of innovative teaching practices we're seeing is growing exponentially. Here, we'll share just a few that we've come across recently.

In a blog post aptly titled, "Own It," Andy Marcinek writes of how he assigned his English 101: College Composition course what he termed, "not a standard, written essay, but a focused collection of media that they will use to inform, to persuade, to challenge or defend." He gave them a simple writing prompt, and then had them gather links, images, videos, and other media to synthesize, with his guidance, into a final presentation. Andy explains, "I am making an attempt to harness all the great resources we have available at the moment. I feel it is my moral obligation as a teacher to open up all learning avenues to them, not hide them." He then provides a new prompt, this one for his fellow educators: his work is "not the pinnacle of classroom innovation. It is a start. It is an idea that I hope you steal, remix and make your own, for your own students. Don’t we owe them that?"

One educator who feels Marcinek's sense of obligation to students is Lisa Neilsen, Technology Innovation Manager in NYC's public schools. In "Advice for Choosing Pages, Groups or Profiles When Using Facebook for Education," Neilsen gives advice and specific examples of educators who are using Facebook to teach, collaborate with students, and communicate with students, parents and others in the community. Nielsen writes that, "in schools where we’re doing what is right for kids, you see engaged youth who use the filter between their ears to determine how to best access information. Students are empowered rather than restricted from using personally owned digital devices in school.  At these schools they understand that people, not tools, have behavior.  Fortunately, more and more often these schools that mirror the real world are starting to crop up." 

One of the exemplars that Neilsen cites is Michelle Luhtala, whose library program at New Canaan High won the ALA's 2010 National School Library Media Program of the Year. Luhtala maintains separate personal and professional profiles on Facebook, as well as a Page for her library. In response to Nielsen's post, Luthala explains how friending students through her professional profile enabled her to, among other things, (i) get student input for the post, at 10 pm on a Friday night, (ii) collaborate with two groups of students who decided to enter a video contest at the last minute, and (iii) coordinate a trip by a large group of students to Philadelphia, for a Model UN.

Another teacher who is a living example of effective and innovative practices  is Pulaski (WI) High School English teacher Kim Noe, recent winner of the "Golden Apple Award" from the Green Bay (WI) Chamber of Commerce. According to the Green Bay Press Gazete, Noe's philosophy when it comes to technology is that students, “don’t turn it off very often, so why not tap into it?" The Gazette reports that, in Noe's classes, "tasks like memorizing vocabulary words are accompanied by related YouTube videos," students receive MP3 files with feedback to essays, and authors visit via Skype. Further, Noe chats with students every night on Facebook; she says, “I have found Facebook is one of the greatest tools to reach kids I could imagine.” How do the students react to Noe's practices? Her co-principal, Dan Slowey, tells the Gazette, “it becomes kind of a small, close-knit family in those classrooms.”

The last "practices" I want to note were not actually put into place by a classroom teacher; they were suggested by Ashley Appozardi, a student teacher who is observing classes. She sat in on the class of a teacher reviewing fractions, in the wake of a test where students had not performed well. In Azzopardi's view, the teacher:

"- Moved through the questions very quickly

- Did not give the students enough time to answer her questions

- Did not rub off the writing on the whiteboard once moved onto the next question

- Did not provide much praise to the students

- Did not allow the students to write anything in their books

- Did not allow the students to use concrete materials, and

- Did not use the interactive whiteboard."

Azzopardi believes that the students learned little from the lesson.

She echoes the calls from Marcinek and Nielsen to build upon the innovative work of other educators, as she writes, "we need to acknowledge that our students have changed radically. The educational system wasn’t designed to teach today’s students....Adapting materials to the language of this generation has already been done successfully, in particular the creation of games which help teach the content, even the most serious....I can only imagine how different that lesson could have been if the interactive whiteboard had been turned on. Instead of the students looking out the window, hoping not to be the one chosen to answer a confusing question next, they could have been excited, engaged, learning and participating in a visual and interactive math lesson."

These four educators are a very small sample of the passionate educators from all over the world who are beginning to offer up examples of innovative, and effective, teaching practices for educators to follow.

Mark E. Moran
CEO

 

In the comments, please offers your own examples that you invite others to "steal, remix and make [their] own."

21st Century Activities for Women's History Month

This week, I scoured the Web for lesson plans and activities for Women's History Month. Few, if any, asked students to do Web research, demonstrate media literacy, synthesize multiple resources, communicate their findings in a manner that engages modern audiences, or share their project outside the walls of their school.

Below I suggest a few activities that will help students learn about inspiring women and seminal events in women's history, and also offer a learning experience that is relevant to the world in which they live and will one day seek to work. At the end of the post, we list our free resources to assist students in their work, and discuss an opportunity for students to publish their work.

Create a Timeline on Life.com

Life.com offers an extensive collection of photos from Life Magazine's legendary archives, as well as from Getty Images. It enables users to create and share a timeline of photos they select, and to write a caption for each photo. Here are four sample timelines about women in history. Caution: some of the photos on Life.com have adult themes, or may depict gore or violence.

Research Women's Firsts in 2010

History is not only what happened long ago; it is made every day. Two years ago, we partnered with The Women on the Web on "2008 Firsts for Women," a collection of women from all over the world who became the first of their gender to achieve something significant in 2008. One example was Brittany Cantazaro, who at the age of 19, had become New York Waterway’s first female ferry captain. Only a week after we published her profile, Brittany piloted the first ferry to rescue passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 after Captain Sullenberger landed it in the Hudson River. She exhibited wisdom beyond her years by cutting the engines of the ferry to avoid creating a wake that could have sent the plane's passengers plunging into the chilly water.

Have a team of students research and create "2010 Firsts for Women." In learning about women who are breaking barriers today, students will ponder why this is so, and gain a greater appreciation for those woman who broke barriers so many years ago.

A research tip: databases, which allow for more precise date targeting than any search engine, will be indispensible for identifying 2010's firsts for women.

Write a Series of Articles with a Common Theme, or Add to One of Ours

We've created a number of series of articles about women around a common theme:

• When we learned about Ada Lovelace, who created one of the world's first computer programs, we created a series of 6 Unsung Women who never got fair credit for their brilliant ideas, heroic deeds or extraordinary work, often due to prejudice, discrimination or the social mores of their time.
• Women who found their calling later in life often have the most unexpectedly inspiring stories. Last year, we again teamed with The Women on the Web to profile Late Bloomers, a handful of women who came into their own later in life, demonstrating the power of perseverance and the value of experience.
• In Women Who Dared, we recognized 15 women whose actions—in courtrooms, on buses, in polling booths and in planes—shattered the status quo. Through guts, grit and unyielding perseverance these women made a difference, raising our expectations for ourselves, our daughters, and our granddaughters.
• In Women of Honor: Writers Who Won’t Be Silenced, we honored five dissident writers whose lives and struggles enlighten and inspire us. One of the writers, Iryna Khalip, has since been arrested in Belarus and charged with criminal acts for speaking out against the government.

A class of students could develop a series of articles around their own theme, or write articles to add to one of our series.

On This Day Challenge

A student (or group of students) chooses a significant event from women's  history and uses the Web to research and gather information on the chosen event. Using critical thinking and analysis skills, the student then writes an article on the event, citing the Web sources. We provide specific instruction on how to write an On This Day article, and offer a dozen examples of events from women's history on this page.

Create Videos or Slideshows Instead of Articles

To create a video portrait of a woman or series of women, students could use a screen capture software product, such as Camtasia, to capture text, images and excerpts of videos of the women profiled, or a product such as Animoto to create a narrated video slideshow. Both products' websites offer extensive tutorials. In each case, students must conduct Web research, and then assemble the images, write a script, and create the end-product. The students' work could be displayed on a school website or their own blogs, or Teacher Tube or YouTube, and thus reach audiences across the globe.

Resources

To support students, we offer these resources:

• SweetSearch, A Search Engine for Students,
• Ten Steps to Better Web Research,
• How to Avoid Plagiarism by Paraphrasing Correctly, and
• How to Synthesize Multiple Resources into an Article.

Opportunity for Students to Get Published

In the 21st century, everyone is a publisher. Students must learn to create work that is seen outside the walls of their school building. We'll happily publish on findingDulcinea any student work that you submit to us that links to excellent online resources and is well-written for the student's grade level. Alternatively, we'll publish a series of blog posts throughout the month that highlight and link to student projects on school or student Websites. Note also that the On This Day Challenge, discussed above, offers a more formal opportunity for students to get published and win prizes.

 

Sincerely,

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In conjunction with findingEducation, we've launched the On This Day Challenge. We're asking students to write articles about historic events by conducting online research, with chances to win gift cards and cash and have their work published on findingDulcinea.

Click here to read everything teachers need to know about getting involved in the project. You'll find a section on motivating students to participate, advice for writing and researching an On This Day article, tips for evaluating Web sites, an FAQ and more.

Children Have Changed History; Can They Change Education?

This week we came across four different content pieces that coalesced in a single thought in our head: children have changed history, and they must be the ones who lead change in education.

 

The first piece is the best example of the power of a child to change history since a fictional young boy shouted "but the Emperor has nothing at all on." Letters of Note  featured a letter from 11yo Grace Bedell to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, in which she urged, "let your whiskers grow...you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President." Lincoln responded coolly, but heeded young Grace's advice, grew one of the most famous beards in history, was elected president, and 150 years later, politicians still try to claim his mantle.

The second is from Doug Johnson, Director of Media and Technology for the Mankato (MN) Public Schools, author of "The Blue Skunk Blog," and one of the brightest minds writing about what education could be. In "Dear Students, Please Led a Thoughtful Revolution," he urges students to "foment a quiet revolution"- one in which students assume much more control over their learning. Johnson concludes "I am less and less convinced that adults will be able to fundamentally change how school is done. I think it will be up to you..." (Make sure also to read this follow-on comment from librarian Shannon Miller of the Van Meter, Iowa schools, where the quiet revolution is taking hold).

The third post is one of the most wonderful ones I've read since we began this journey. In "The Jury Is In," Shelley Wright, a high school biology teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada, writes of the results of her experiment of letting students run the class for two weeks. At the end of this period, she announced there would be a standard quiz to test what students had learned. One perpetually failing student, perhaps empowered by gaining some measure of control over her learning, complained that "when she looks at the questions she goes blank" and asked, “If that happens, can I turn over the paper and write all of the stuff I do know?”  The next day, the students received their quiz, with one question: "Tell me what you’ve learned."

 

The fourth post is the Huffington Post's coverage of the "Education Summit" in Washington, D.C. this week. Led by Jed Bush, it "offered a venue for state education secretaries, superintendents, university professors and business execs to share ideas." As with many prior summits, "teachers" are conspicuously missing from the list. What was discussed at this "summit"? The same thing discussed at prior summits - No Child Left Behind, charter schools, distance learning technology, politics and ideology.

 

In a television intervivew afterwards, Bush and another man focused solely on using the Internet for distance learning, by extending the reach of specially qualified teachers. No doubt, a useful concept, but as the the students of Doug Johnson, Shannon Miller or Shelley Wright could have told them, one that doesn't go nearly far enough. It keeps the teacher in the center, with students sitting passively - and restlessly - in rows, absorbing, in the hopes of being able to soullessly regurgitate the information when cued.

 

Unaccompanied by significant pedagogical changes that leverages how the world has changed and students have changed, a more qualified teacher on a screen is only a marginal improvement over a less-qualified teacher in class, just as an e-textbook is an inadequate successor to a physical textbook, and a Smart Board not exploited to its potential is simply a chalkboard that runs up the electric bill.

 

Let's hope there are thousands of Grace Bedells in our midst to quietly foment a revolution. Because our education emperors have nothing at all on.

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

Why SweetSearch Is the Best Search Engine for Students

SweetSearch is the product of 100,000+ hours of research that went into creating findingDulcinea's 700+ Web Guides and thousands of articles. This content links to tens of thousands of Web sites that have been evaluated as credible by our research experts and librarian and teacher consultants.

SweetSearch searches a "whitelist" comprised only of these 35,000 links, as well as sites we uncover by sifting through recommendations of librarians and teachers on their blogs and social bookmarking sites. You know those great lists you've been bookmarking for years? Well, SweetSearch is a giant, searchable repository of them.

It's likely that, had we sat down at the beginning to find a list of 35,000 credible sites, we would not have done it nearly as well as we did by instead finding, evaluating, organizing and annotating hundreds of Web Guides to the best 25-75 sites about a particular subject, or the best 5-8 sources about thousands of events in history, famous people, or timeless news topics.

We constantly evaluate the search results in SweetSearch and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and universities. We do more than merely exclude spam sites; we also exclude marginal sites that read well and authoritatively, but lack academic or journalistic rigor, and thus are not cite worthy.

For a bevy of reviews of findingDulcinea and SweetSearch from top educators, see our media kit; to add SweetSearch to the search options on your Web browsers, click on the "Add On" box on SweetSearch; or get a widget for SweetSearch, to  embed it on your school Web site.

For younger learners, we've recently introduced a beta version of SweetSearch4Me, which is the only search engine that prominently ranks high quality Websites created for elementary school students, and mixes them with accessible primary source sites.

(Please note that SweetSearch4Me is the only variant search engine; our landing pages for School Librarians, Social Studies Teachers, Biographies, etc. do not contain their own versions of SweetSearch; they all highlight particular content from findingDulcinea and other sites that are useful to the target group, but the search engine included is the original version of SweetSearch).

Technology journalist Paul Gilster wrote in his column in The News Observer, "Search here and you're working in a universe of checked, verifiable sources and solid information.....Google or Bing may find many of the same sites, but what I've noticed is that some of the better sites for a particular topic wind up deep in their search results, often outranked by Web pages more commonly used but of inferior quality...I was impressed with SweetSearch's focus on credible scholarship and emphasis on primary source materials."

Our favorite review came from an impressive member of our target audience - Amanda, who blogs as "Farmgirl Writes," and deemed SweetSearch "an amazing search engine," and explained,

"Within a half-an-hour, I was ready to type my essay, wondering why I'd wasted a half a day searching with Google and EBSCOhost. (Sorry Google. I still love you - just not for research anymore.) Why didn't I discover this before? If I had known about Sweet Search at the beginning of World History, I think I would have saved myself hundreds of hours of research."

Many articles that may be 3, 5, or 10 years old - but are still the most authoritative writing on the subject - are treated as stale by other search engines, and yet appear on the first page of SweetSearch results.  And to most students, the first page is the only one that exists. 

 The result? As Amanda wrote, students find what they need, and they find it faster. When my generation was in school, the librarian pointed us to pre-screened resources on our general subject, and we decided which ones were the most relevant to our specific research project. That’s what SweetSearch does for students with online resources. 

To enable students to better scan results to determine relevancy, we've partnered with Yolink. From a SweetSearch results page, click on the Yolink toolbar on the left side, and add a term to narrow your search. Yolink will then browse your original search results and show an expanded view of the results in which your additional term appears. Yolink then enables you to save excerpts of search results, with the source link, to a Google doc, Web-based email, or social bookmarking and sharing services such as Diigo, and to the citation generator Easy Bib.

Together, SweetSearch, Yolink and EasyBib are utterly transforming Web search for students, from something they can barely use to something they can use quite effectively.

 Of course, students still need to follow the principles laid out in our Ten Steps to Better Web Research by, among other things, formulating good search queries, and often looking past the first few results to find the very best ones. Another principle is to use more than one search engine, as not even we use SweetSearch exclusively - when we research an article, we start with SweetSearch and usually find substantially all we need there, but then we always cross-check against other search engines and databases, and so should your students. To facilitate this, SweetSearch includes a toggle option to view the search results from Google. 

But enough of the "press release."  Let's take SweetSearch for a test-drive. We'll compare the results for "War of 1812" on SweetSearch, Google and Bing.

Many of the results returned by Google and Bing aren't quite up to snuff for including in a school paper. Wikipedia ranks first on both engines. While many people find Wikipedia a good place to begin their research, most educators are frustrated that students use it almost exclusively, and not wisely.  For this reason, Wikipedia almost never shows up in SweetSearch results.

For "War of 1812," the second result on Google is "Gateway New Orleans," which includes a brief summary of the war by an unknown author. The purpose of the site is to promote tourism in New Orleans, not to promote scholarship on the War of 1812. And both search engines prominently display a link that contains a teaser summary of the war by Gala Films, whose purpose is to get you to buy a movie.

Both of these sites rank so high because general commercial search engines display recently published content high in its results, since many times that is what the user finds most relevant. But when it comes to a war that ended nearly two centuries ago, recently produced material has little advantage over the “classics.” 

Both search engines also prominently feature "Warof1812.ca," and "Warof1812.net," likely because of the specificity of their domain names. The first offers a lot of material written by two people, whose credentials are not provided. The site contains no "About Us" section, and its primary purpose is to sell products relating to the war. The second is the result of a long-abandoned project to put student material on the Internet; it's primary purpose now seems to be to drive you to search the topic yourself on Google.

On the first page of SweetSearch's results, you'll find precisely the Web sites that a teacher wants students using. The first result is the Library of Congress' entire collection of primary source documents on the War of 1812. The second is a comprehensive ThinkQuest created by students under the supervision of teachers and professors, followed by sites from the National Archives and the U.S. Military.  Four sites in the next group—an Indiana University site about the political cartoons of the War of 1812, a Long Island University site about African-American Freedom Fighters, a Smithsonian site about the Star Spangled Banner, and the Avalon Project of Yale University—are sites that students could use to solidly distinguish their work from that of their classmates. Where are these results on Google and Bing? Scattered through the third to seventh results pages.

Now let's do a comparison for "Shakespeare" in SweetSearch, Google and Bing.

Again, Wikipedia ranks first for Google and Bing. Also appearing prominently, again due to the specific domain names, are "Shakespeare.com" and "Shakespeare-online.com." Each of these is a well-written "passion site," one created by an individual who is passionate about the subject, but does not possess academic credentials that would enable a student to rely on the sites when writing an academic paper. Each engine also contains several sites that are only about selling products.

On SweetSearch, you again find some outstanding academic resources, many of which are buried in Google or Bing. These include sites from the Library of Congress, the British Library, PBS and Project Gutenberg.

We'd love to get your feedback on SweetSearch. Try your own searches and let us know what you think by commenting below or by e-mailing us at Mark[dot]Moran[at]DulcineaMedia[dot]com

Mark Moran
Founder and CEO

 

Teaching Ten Steps to Better Web Research - Supplemental Materials

 TEACHING TEN STEPS TO BETTER WEB RESEARCH

The presentation on "Teaching Ten Steps to Better Web Research" is a PowerPoint that I have uploaded to our account on SlideShare. Where the footnoted material is available online, it may be accessed by clicking on the highlighted text below.

1. Prensky, Marc. “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” : On the Horizon. NCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001

2. Els Kuiper, Monique Volman and Jan Terwel. “Students' use of Web literacy skills and strategies: searching, reading and evaluating Web information.” Information Research: Vol. 13, No.3,  (September, 2008).

3. Shu-Hsien L. Chen. “Searching the Online Catalog and the World Wide Web.” Journal of Educational Media & Library Sciences, 41 1 (September 2003) 29-43

4. A Study of Students' Online Search Behavior, Mark E. Moran and Shannon A. Firth, April 30, 2010.

 5. On “Empowering Parents and Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape.” Berkman Center for Internet & Society. February 24, 2010.

6.UCL. “Information behavior of the researcher of the future”: 11 January 2008.

7. Steve Kolowich, Searching for Better Research Habits, Inside Higher Ed, September 29, 2010

8.  Eisenberg, Mike. “What is the Big 6.” The Big 6: Information & Technology Skills for Student Achievement, (1997)

 9. “Research Skills.” State Library of Victoria. Ergo. (2010)

10. Media Post: Google Research Focuses on Search Failures, September 21, 2010

11. Geoffrey Nunberg, “Teaching Students to Swim in the Online Sea,” The New York Times, February 13,2005.

12. Eszter Hargittai etal, “Trust Online: Young Adults’ Evaluation of Web Content,” International Journal of Communications 4 (2010), 468-494, 1932-8036/20100468

Dulcinea Media

Ten Steps to Better Web Research

SweetSearch

SweetSearch4Me                                   

Yolink                       

Primary Sources?                      

Original Source?

Can’t Cite Wikipedia            

Who Wrote It?                                               

Why Did They Write It?                                               

When Did They Write It?

 

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DULCINEA MEDIA'S PRODUCTS

Dulcinea Media provides free tools and content that help educators teach students how to use the Web effectively.  These are discussed comprehensively in these two blog posts:

9 Ways We Help Educators Teach Students How to Use the Web

How We Help Social Studies Teachers Integrate the Web into the Syllabus

The second post repeats a fair bit of the first, but adds specific insight into our content for social studies teachers.

These two posts above themselves link to just about everything else I'd want you to read about our company, but for your convenience, I repeat some of the most important and relevant links below:

Why SweetSearch is the Best Search Engine for Students

            Click here for widgets for SweetSearch and our other products.

Transforming Web Research for Students

Ten Steps to Better Web Research

Educators Will Create the Replacement for Textbooks

The Importance of Great Educators, Again

Six months ago, we blogged about the importance of great educators. It's a topic we celebrate regularly, particularly in Educators That Rock, a series of profiles of educators that inspire us. The occasion then was an article we had written about how difficult it can be for students from rural communities to apply to top colleges. We spoke with Angela Bakker-Lee, who had ventured from a rural town to Stanford University, a Marshall Scholarship and a career as a healthcare consultant. Angela credited several of her teachers, particularly Linda Lee Tatro, for helping Angela recognize and realize her potential:

"I have no doubt that knowing her changed my life. She encouraged me in a way that no other teacher had up to that point. She had more confidence in me than I did. And I think she was the first adult to really talk to me."

This week, teachers came under attack from talk show hosts and many others who have spent little time in classrooms. They made broad statements about fixing "the" education system, as though it were a monolith with a fixed set of problems, rather than an amalgamation of individual districts spread across our federation of 50 states, each with its own particular problems to address - sometimes teachers, sometimes administrators or severe budget cuts or external phenomena, sometimes parents and students themselves.

Happily, I've also come across several more affirmations of the importance of great educators, and the impact they can have on students.

The greatest wisdom often comes out of the mouth of babes, as I learned, again, when I came across this two-year old video featuring Dalton Sherman, then a fifth grader. Addressing 20,000 educators in Dallas, he told them, using a rhetorical style as convincing as you'll ever hear:  "here’s the deal: I can do anything, be anything, create anything, dream anything, become anything -- because you believe in me, and it rubs off on me....In some cases, you're all we've got."

The next reminder came from our Interview of the Day from yesterday, featuring Maya Angelou. As so often seems to be the case, her early life was not what you'd ordinarily expect to lead to awards and nominations from Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Pulitzer. At 7, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, which led her uncle to kill the rapist. Stunned by the episode, Angelou refused to speak for four years, and found solace only in poetry. In a 1987 interview with CBS Radio, Angelou explained how a teacher, Mrs. Flowers, conquered a 12 year-old trauma victim's refusal to speak:

"She said, 'you can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”

The final reminder this week came from a blog post written from the heart of Sarah Edson, a teacher at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury, Conn. I met Sarah this summer at #ntcamp in Philadelphia, an educator managed "un-conference," a growing phenomenon in which teachers create their own professional development, on their own time, with their own money.

Anyone who has been to an un-conference would not broadly proclaim that teachers are the problem with "the" education system. #ntcamp was the starkest evidence I've seen yet of the profound commitment of many teachers to creating new, and relevant, approaches to education. Originally envisioned as a small program where experienced teachers would share tips with new teachers, #ntcamp was attended by more than 100 veteran educators who assembled at Boys' Latin Charter School at 8 a.m. on a 102-degree Saturday.

Many were from the greater Philly area, New Jersey and New York; plus dozens of out-of-towners such as retiree Jerry Blumengarten, up from Florida; Pam Moran and Paula White from Albemarle County, Virgina; Steve Anderson from Winston-Salem, NC; Kyle Pace from Lee's Summit, Missouri; Shannon Miller from Van Meter, Iowa; and Elizabeth and Kristina Peterson, sisters-in-law who drove 7 hours from New Hampshire, overnight, after attending a wedding till 11 p.m. the night before, and arriving in Philly at 6:30 a.m. It was an amazing day of learning from an inspiring group of educators.

Sarah Edson was one of the few relatively new teachers there, and evidently she also was quite inspired by it, as well as by lessons learned from her educator mother, who passed away a decade ago. Sarah poignantly relays the experience of tending to her terminally ill mother for weeks, and the powerful lessons it taught her about paying close attention to a person's needs. She concludes by vowing:

"I will continue to attempt to connect with each of my students, even in the face of unresponsiveness.  I will maintain hope.  I will celebrate each success.  And I will pay careful attention just in case I discover that a student, in her own way, has shown that she needs me."

It's here that I am supposed to conclude the post with a particular insight of my own. Instead, I invite you to re-read the words of Angela, Dalton, Maya and Sarah about the importance of great educators:

"I have no doubt that knowing her changed my life. She encouraged me in a way that no other teacher had up to that point. She had more confidence in me than I did. And I think she was the first adult to really talk to me."

"Here’s the deal: I can do anything, be anything, create anything, dream anything, become anything -- because you believe in me, and it rubs off on me....In some cases, you're all we've got."

"She said, 'you can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”

"I will continue to attempt to connect with each of my students, even in the face of unresponsiveness.  I will maintain hope.  I will celebrate each success.  And I will pay careful attention just in case I discover that a student, in her own way, has shown that she needs me."

Mark E. Moran
Founder & CEO

Marty McFly and Traveling through Time, by Teaching History

“Back to the Future” was released 25 years ago this week. When Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, first entered a date into the DeLorean’s time machine, it was July 5, 2010. Many on the Internet noted the date this week and concluded that if Marty actually arrived today, he’d quickly get back in the DeLorean and move on, or back, to some other date.

 Of course much of Back to the Future was played out in the past. And that’s where I prefer to spend a lot of my time, as well. As I’ve written often, the key to foreseeing the future is understanding the past. That’s why much of the heart of findingDulcinea is devoted to helping students use the Internet to understand the past.

 Our On This Day feature remains the most popular section on the site. And my favorite “On This Day” date is the Fourth of July, one of the only days on the calendar on which we simply had to write about three historic events.

Our three On This Days for the Fourth of July explain how America announced its Declaration of Independence, two of its founding fathers died within hours of each other exactly 50 years later, and how, in 1939, a legendary athlete told a sell-out crowd at Yankee Stadium that, notwithstanding the diagnosis of a terminal illness he had just received, he was “the Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth.”

 Shortly after we sent our newsletter for the Fourth, I received an email that channeled Marty McFly: “amazing history. I've been dreaming that someday someone would invent a time machine because I am not contented with what I merely read. I want to see it if I could live in every time there is a great event.”

 And my immediate thought was that there is a way to go Back to the Future, to live in the time of a great event: teach about it. As a Contracts tutor in Law School, the subject came alive for me much more than it did as a learner. Next, I had the pleasure of visiting a number of kindergarten classrooms to read. I never went with just a book. By carefully introducing a number of props, I transformed beyond a mere reader – to the kids, I was Captain Hook, the Cat in the Hat, the Mouse given a cookie.

 And now I’ve helped create findingDulcinea, and continually discuss with students, educators and others some of the amazing things I’ve learned by researching or reading the articles on our website. What we offer goes beyond mere reading – to really engage someone in the importance of an event, you need to travel back to it – by viewing primary sources, such as pictures, videos or letters – and hearing the accounts of those who were there, or lived contemporaneously.

Last summer, I visited the restaurant founded by Jim Croce, one of my music idols. Displayed there were walls of pictures of Jim in concert and with his family, his guitars, and other memorabilia. But it was only when I saw the framed sheet containing the original writing of “Time in a Bottle” that Jim was no longer gone three decades; he was standing right next to me; I was awed by how the writing was so simple and yet conveyed so much. And thus all of our articles and Web Guides about historic topics offer all the primary sources as we can find on the Web. And discovering great events and finding the best primary sources on the Web to share with our readers helps me feel, in a small way, part of the event. But I am envious of those who regularly get to travel Back to the Future to these events with a class full of eager young learners.

Thank you for reading.

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

 

Question Number Two: Why Did They Write This?

Once you know who published the Web site and wrote the content, you have to ask, "Why?"

When we create our Web Guides, we usually provide research strategies that caution you to be wary of sites that aren't what they seem. We've come across dozens of Web sites that appear to offer valid information but in fact were created for another purpose. 

Some of these we explained in a feature called "Suspicious Sites," that is an ideal tool for learning how to decipher "why" a site was created. 

Many Web sites provide so-called information about a health topic, but are published by lawyers looking for medical malpractice clients. 

We've uncovered Web sites that appear on the surface to provide good information about 

• mortgages, 
• financial advice, 
• insurance, 
• plastic surgery options and 
• drug treatment centers.

But in each case, their only purpose was to collect your personal information so they could sell it to companies or individuals offering those services. 

In a more common example, we recently wrote about a famous woman whose achievements were legitimately disputed. The Maryland Women's Hall of Fame site offered a biography about her but didn't mention the controversy. The stated purpose of the site was to honor women who have made lasting contributions, and apparently it felt that its mission would be compromised if it diluted her contribution by noting the controversy. Yet if you handed in a paper on this woman and did not note the controversy, the omission would probably reduce your grade.

In all these cases, publishing accurate, balanced information was not the primary purpose of the Web site.

Of course, you should use a full list of criteria when evaluating a Web site. But as soon as a Web site loads on your computer, ask yourself "who," and then "why"?

Then comes when.

Question Number Three: When Did They Write This?

Thank you for reading,

Mark E. Moran

CEO

Question Number One: Who Wrote This?

Finding information on the Internet is like being a good police detective: the information is only as good as its source. And, like a good detective, a good Web researcher never decides to use information without considering who gave it to him. He asks, “Who created this Web site, and who is the author of the content I'm reading?”

Now, this may seem obvious, but when we asked 300 students how they know they can trust information on a Web site, very few of them said they look at the site's publisher and its authors. And I've even way too many adults recommend a Web site even though the site itself offered no information about who created it.

Is the site's publisher a scientific journal, a law firm, a university or a well-established news organization? Are the writers professors, journalists or experts in the field?

Does the site employ a whole editorial team, with full-time writers and skilled editors who review everything, or are the publisher and writer the same person—someone with a lot of knowledge about, and passion for, the topic? If the latter, is he just publishing the site as a hobby? If so, the consequences for getting information wrong are minimal.

Is the author simply trying to entertain you, or sell you something, or get you to donate money to a cause?

Who cares? Google sorts this all out for you, and lists the sites from the best writers first, right?

Wrong.

In fact, the opposite is usually true.

Someone who wants to sell you something works hard to make his site rank higher than it should. And someone who is passionate about a topic and unburdened by journalistic or academic guidelines may write an entertaining article that is linked to often and thus ranks well in search engines.

On the other hand, many experts and professors don't even try to make their Web sites rank high in search engines.

When I explained why SweetSearch was the best search engine for students, I showed several examples of the biggest search engines giving prominence to sites that didn't say who they were published by or who authored their articles.

So how do you find out who published the site and why?

The “About Us” section of a site is a good place to start. If the site doesn't list the name of the publisher and its management team—and this is often the case—then hit your “back” button and visit another site. You would never trust a book without knowing its author and publisher; why would you trust a Web site without the same information?

But the “About Us” can't be the end of your research. Look for additional information about the publisher or author and their credentials elsewhere on the Web site, and then by searching their names in a search engine. Any reputable publisher or author should be mentioned on other reputable Web sites. For an author, search the name along with key subject words to see if he or she has written other articles on the subject for other publications. Usually someone who is an expert on a topic writes about it often for several different publications.

Now that you know how to find out who wrote this, also ask:

Question Number Two: Why Did They Write This?

Question Number Three: When Did They Write This?

Mark E. Moran

Founder & CEO

The two most important questions to ask when evaluating a Web site

Many students evaluate Web sites using a long list of criteria, but pay little heed to the most important two:

Who publishes this Web site and wrote its content, and why?

When we asked 300 high school and middle school students how they know they can trust information on a Web site, few mentioned evaluating the site's publisher and its authors. Further, I've seen hundreds of cases where intelligent professionals have recommend, or cited, a Web site without knowing who published its content. When I evaluate a Web site, "who" and "why" are the first questions I ask, and it often only takes me a few seconds to decide to move on to the next Web site.

The publisher and its authors may be scientists, doctors, lawyers, or professors seeking to enhance professional reputations. Or it may be a news organization staffed by people with years of journalism education and training, with strong editorial guidelines, and a veteran editing team. The site may be published by an intelligent person who has a lot of knowledge about, and passion for, the topic, but who is publishing the site as a hobby, and doesn't necessarily care if he gets it exactly right.  It may have been written by someone who is merely looking to entertain you.  Or sell you something, or get you to donate money to a cause.

I've listed these types of possible authors in order of credibility. You might think that this also reflects their ranking in major search engines. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Someone looking to sell you something devotes a lot of resources to manipulating search engines so his site ranks higher than it should. And someone who is passionate about a topic and not burdened by journalistic or academic guidelines may write an entertaining site that is linked to often, and thus ranks well in search engines. Conversely, professional and academic experts usually put no effort into making their Web sites rank well in search engines.

When I explained why SweetSearch was the best search engine for students, I compared its search results for "War of 1812" and "Shakespeare" to those of Google and Bing. Those search engines prominently listed sites because that were recently published, and whose purpose was to get you to visit a city or watch a movie. Others were trying to sell you products, or were written by people whose credentials were little more than "I really love Shakespeare." Do you want to trust your grade to information found on any of these sites?

So how do you find out who published the site, and why?

The “About Us” section of a site is a good place to start. If the site doesn't list the name of the publisher and its management team - and this is often the case - then hit your Back button and visit another site. You would never trust a book without knowing its author and publisher; why would you trust a Web site without the same information?

But the About Us can't be the end of your research. Look for additional information about the publisher or author, and their intentions, elsewhere on the Web site, and then by searching the names in a search engine. Any reputable publisher or author should be mentioned on other reputable Web sites. For an author, search the name along with key subject words to see if he or she has written other articles, for other publications, on the subject. Usually someone who is an expert on a topic writes about it often, for several different publications.

Once you know who published the Web site and wrote the content, you have to ask, "Why?"

When we create our Web Guides for findingDulcinea, we usually provide research strategies that caution you to be wary of sites that aren't what they seem. We've come across dozens of Web sites that appear to offer valid information but in fact were created for another purpose. Some of these we explained in a feature called "Suspicious Sites," that is an ideal tool for learning how to decipher "why" a site was created. Many Web sites provide so-called information about a health topic, but were published by lawyers looking for medical malpractice clients. We've uncovered Web sites that appear on the surface to provide good information about mortgages, financial advice, insurance, plastic surgery options or drug treatment centers, but their only purpose was to collect your personal information so they could sell it to companies or individuals offering those services. In a more common example, recently we wrote about a highly celebrated woman who achievements were the subject of a good faith, historic dispute; we noted that a government-funded "Hall of Fame" site failed to even mention the controversy. The stated purpose of the site was to honor woman who have made lasting contributions, and apparently it felt that this mission would be compromised by reporting the controversy.

In all these cases, publishing accurate, balanced information was not the primary purpose of the Web site.

Of course, you should use a full list of criteria when evaluating a Web site. But as soon as a Web site loads on your computer, ask yourself "who" and "why"?

Mark Moran

Founder & CEO

NYS Social Studies Conference: Teaching a Little, Learning a Lot

Last Thursday, Dulcinea Media CEO Mark Moran and I gave a presentation on improving Internet research skills at the New York State Council for the Social Studies (NYCSS) conference in Rye, New York. We were delighted with the response from the attendees. Our presentation is now available online; it includes the results of our survey of online research and best practices for using Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, and Skype in the classroom.

Even though we were invited to the conference to teach what we know, we came away learning a lot more than we taught. Because we weren't exhibitors at this conference, I attended many of the other presentations. It was almost impossible to choose between them, as there were usually 12 panels happening at once, but I lucked out when I chose Bill Reilly’s.

Reilly is a 6th grade teacher at the Bethlehem Central Middle School in Delmar, NY, and founder of the Global Coalition Project. In 2006, he won the Disney Teacher of the Year award for bringing “real world learning” experiences to his students. In the last few years, he developed the Global Coalition Project, a network of students in 20 different countries that share letters, life stories, and artwork, and hold discussions over Skype. The Global Coalition Project even has its own international news program, showcasing news reports from student reporters around the world. To learn more about Reilly and his work, visit findingEducation's “Educators that Rock” page later this week.

In another presentation I attended, “If You Can Say it You Can Write It,” the presenters (Jeannette Balantic of Garden City Public Schools and Maria Carnesi from Plainview Old Bethpage Schools) explained how teachers could “optimize instruction time” by having students write shorter assignments, while increasing their frequency. Brilliant! They likened the process to coaching a basketball game: “coaches give feedback the whole time kids are playing from the sidelines. When they realize kids are in trouble, they call a time-out.”

Because students rarely read and absorb the comments written on long essays, grading a full sample essay every week is not a good use of time and effort. For example, A.P. U.S. History teachers can help students practice writing the DBQs for their exams by having them write just the introductory paragraph for five weeks until they’ve mastered it, then move on to body paragraphs. This practical approach lets you root out problems and intervene early.

After a night of carousing with Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold and other re-enactors at a historic tavern, I attended a few more presentations on Friday.

That day’s highlight for me was Tom Daccord’s presentation on effective online history research. Online research is a major part of my job, and while I thought I knew most of the secrets, there’s always something more to learn. Daccord, a former teacher, now co-founder of EdTechTeacher and author of two books, explained that “the heart of effective search is keyword search."

For example, if you ask students to find primary sources for movies in the 1920s, those that don't type "primary sources for movies in the 1920s" will search “movies” and "1920s." But students need to stop, think, and reflect. Daccords asked his audience, "What might be some contextually, historically appropriate terms?” The term “movies” was not widely used in the 1920s. So in this case, “films” or “pictures” may be more relevant. Next, students should consider what kinds of resources they hope to find. They could add other keywords such as “newspapers,” “posters,” “articles,” and “interviews.”  In addition to his demonstration of Google’s WonderWheel and Timeline features, this nugget about keyword search was a terrific take-away.

I gained so much practical wisdom from NYSCSS, and left feeling inspired by the teachers and educators I met.  I'm now really looking forward to the next conference!

Thank you to everyone who participated, presented and shared their insights with me.

Shannon Firth

Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

A Visit to the Springfield Township High School Library

Through the glass doors of the Springfield Township High School Library, you can see a life-size cutout of Robert Pattinson, the lead actor in “Twilight,” standing on some shelves. Pattinson’s defiant presence, front and center, signals who runs this library: the students.

I walk in and spot Dr. Joyce Valenza, the school’s library information specialist, through another window, one that peeks into her office where she sits consulting with a student researcher. She apologizes for not being able to shake my hand (she has a cold), and welcomes me and begins telling me about some of the projects her students are working on.

She introduces me to her assistants Patty Gee and Casey Arlen, who rave about findingDulcinea, then the study hall students, who greet me politely, and the U.S. History II students who are focused on their computers.

Mr. MacFarland’s history students explain that they are creating an online textbook that covers material their textbook leaves out. Valenza reminds these students that the Google News Timeline and Fact on File’s World News Digest—one of many databases available to the students—are great places to begin their research.

She also reminds them about Dulcinea Media’s SweetSearch tool, which I’m excited to see is listed on her search page. I mention that our site also has a brand new Biographies page. A few minutes later I see two girls scrolling through a findingDulcinea profile of Michael Phelps.

In one darkened cove, a projector screen is lit up behind Mr. Alexander, who is giving directions to students researching their senior seminar. In another room, Mrs. Mazurek’s eighth-graders are comparing products online using Google Squared. The other half of Mr. MacFarland’s class, the half not creating textbooks, is watching a history movie that introduces a new unit; the area is often used for student presentations, Valenza explains. She guides me through the reference area, the magazines aisles and the student-run art gallery. Outside the gallery is more art: painted pottery dishes, medieval castles, models of the Great Wall of China and a life-size wire sculpture one student made of himself.

When we return to her office, Valenza shows me the keynote presentation she helped students in a musical theater class put together for a K-12 Online Conference. The German students created their own art museums, with introductions written and scripted entirely in German. World History II students also created interactive museums of artifacts of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Reformation using a variety of tools that included Glogster, NoodleTools, Animoto, Wikispaces and VoiceThread. “Sometimes even after the class was over, they just wouldn’t leave,” she said, laughing.

The whole time I’m there, a student, who introduces herself as Maya, is working quietly at a computer in the back of Valenza’s office, wearing headphones. She takes them off to explain her project: a stop-motion animation about the future of libraries. Characters—an old man and an ‘80s fairy—were drawn, cut out and moved around a background, and then photographed hundreds of times. I ask how she gets the characters to stay in place for each new scene. Without a trace of condescension in her voice, she answers, “They’re aerial photographs.” Of course, I think. After she leaves, I ask Valenza what class Maya is making the animation for. I’m not surprised to hear that it isn’t for credit at all; it will be used in advocacy efforts supporting school library information programs for students that don't have them. Maya and a few other students volunteered their study hall time to create a PSA that will be used by the Spokane Moms and others.

Toward the end of my visit, I run into the school principal, Mr. Hackney, who tells me about his first trip to the library. He remembers walking in and hearing lots of chatter and noise, so he started “shushing” people. “Everyone started looking at me funny,” he said. “Now I understand. It’s a working library.”

The Internet Holds the Past, Too

Modern-day students live in a ‘now’ society, but now is constantly shifting. What’s ‘now’ right now—Kanye West’s rude interruption of country crossover Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards—has already begun sliding into the archives of our minds. It will appear in media outlets for days to come, and will be revived on end-of-year lists recapping the wackiest moments in pop culture, but it’s already passé to a lot of people, particularly young people.

A week is a long time in politics. It’s also a long time in a student’s life. My tenth grade history teacher once wisely told our Western Civ class, “Every year of your life will feel shorter.” Ten years later, I see he was right. For today’s students, the media—and particularly the Internet—is helping to stretch time even more. The number of events, exchanges, videos and emoticons that a young person experiences in a given week is far greater than it was for me ten years ago. But each digital transaction seems to hinge on the present, or better yet, the future. What about the past?

Beloit College publishes the Mindset List every fall. It’s an “effort to identify the worldview of 18 year-olds” entering their first year of college. The list is made up of cultural phenomena that have existed during these students’ lifetimes. For example, the class of 2013 has “never used a card catalog to find a book.”

As Time Magazine rightly notes in an article on the list, a lot has changed since 1991, the year most of this year’s college freshmen were born. “In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?”

We can look back, and pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come. But to keep moving forward, we have to keep looking back—not only at last week, when outbursts by Rep. Joe Wilson, Serena Williams and Kanye West got us thinking about topics like race, sportsmanship, egotism, manners and musical talent—but farther back, decades and even centuries back.

The Internet has a reputation for showcasing the next big thing in an ever-refreshing browser page. But today’s young thinkers should remember that the Internet is a limitless store of information, and it has a very good memory.

Check out our article “Web Sites for Researching History” to delve deeper into the past online.

Stay tuned for our On This Day Challenge, launching next week, where students will improve their online research skills and general Web savvy by writing articles about historical events using online resources. Students will post their articles to findingEducation, our collaboration tool for teachers and students, and we'll be selecting the best for publication on findingDulcinea.

Sign up for findingEducation to get notified about the challenge launch!

Live Blogging Beyond Facebook: How Will Today's Students Use the Web of Tomorrow? | Internet Week NY 2009

Students are at the forefront of a rapidly changing Internet, which is posing significant questions for how universities, Web businesses and employers will adjust. To explore this further, findingDulcinea is hosting and moderating a panel of leading student-focused startups who will discuss how students will find the best information online, how they're tailoring the Web in unique ways to fit their varied interests, how new Web sites will fulfill students’ needs, and ways in which businesses can better serve the 16-22 age group. We’ll also ask for audience participation as we share goals and forecasts for the Internet of the next five years. Our panelists are:

• Ariel Aberg-Riger, Creative Development & Marketing Manager, Fourth Story Media
• Jordan Goldman, Founder and CEO, Unigo
• Kate Hillis, Co-Founder & Partner, NextNext Entertainment, Chat the Planet and Qwidget
• Mark Moran, Founder & CEO, findingDulcinea and SweetSearch, Moderator
• James Rohrbach, Founder & CEO, GulliverGo
• Michael Staton, Founder & CEO, Inigral

Follow the event here, or on our Twitter account. Follow the discussion using the Twitter hashtag #gmfb.

Inspiring Kids and Teens to Become Volunteers

A teenage volunteer helps a special needs child in the program  Friendship Circle. (Rich Schultz/AP)

There’s a good reason why colleges like applicants with community service under their belts. Volunteerism is an often life-changing experience that helps young people mature, work with people they might never normally meet, see new places and respond to a higher calling, as President Obama implored us all to do during a commencement address to Wesleyan University’s Class of 2008. Below are sites that can help kids, teenagers and young adults shape their adult selves through volunteering.

DoSomething.org is a nonprofit organization that harnesses the Web to bring young people a large, searchable database of volunteer opportunities and funding sources to get their ideas off the ground. The organization gives $500 grants to motivated teens and young adults, and awards $100,000 to the best volunteer project proposal of the year.

Idealist.org’s Kids & Teens section is “an essential resource for kids who want to start a project of their own, or connect with youth organizations already involved in human rights, the environment or the arts,” says Senior Writer Sarah Amandolare in the article “Volunteer Opportunities for Kids.” The article lists a few more sites like Idealist.org and DoSomething.org.

Our Alternative Spring Break Web Guide points out that local or remote volunteer opportunities can be an enlightening way for a student to spend a couple of weeks. Find inspiration and help planning your volunteer trip in this guide.

One such travel volunteerism site is Global Works, which integrates service work with cultural immersion to give teens an alternative to more typical summer activities. Language immersion trips are also available, as are custom-designed trips for groups of 14 or more.

Learn more in the Philanthropy and Nonprofits Web Guide.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

Web Sites Every College Applicant Should Know About

When I was about to head off to college in 2001, I knew of only a handful of Web sites that could help me prepare for the next four years. Today there are many more. In researching an article called “8 Sites for College Dorm Survival” for findingDulcinea, I came across several sites that can help all the Web 2.0 generation kids heading to school in the next year or two.

Unigo promises to make the college decision-making process easier for high school students. With its staff and user-submitted reviews of several hundred top U.S. colleges and universities, the site is poised to be one of the most content-rich college review sites on the Web. Accompanying the reviews are on-campus videos featuring interviews and tours, and helpful articles on all things collegiate.

EDUInReview  collects valuable educational resources from around the Web, publishes articles and reviews and otherwise helps students get their bearings on loans, scholarships and decision-making.

DormDelicious is a blog with a variety of articles on improving one’s quality of dorm life. Get inspired to decorate, learn to love your roommate(s), browse pictures of fellow co-eds’ rooms and watch videos that peer into dorm culture around the country.

Surviving College Life is another blog with sage advice from Jamie, a recent UC San Diego college grad, about all aspects of college living. Jamie links to recommended products, blogs and sites around the Web, and boasts quality original writing that will comfort many.

High school juniors and seniors will appreciate our Web Guide to Applying to College, which has sections on entrance exams, applications and entrance essays, choosing a college and steps in the application process.

Those about to start their journey should check out the Web Guide to College Life, with a few of the sites mentioned above and many more on dorm life, health and nutrition, studying and staying organized, and more.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development